Cheap airport transfers
A Bordeaux Airport taxi settled before you fly, with one figure agreed in writing and a driver set against your flight number at BOD. The rank outside Hall A runs on a meter with four settings, and France sets no fixed airport price here as it does at Paris, Nice or Toulouse — so the figures you have seen quoted for the city centre are averages rather than promises. A pre-booked private transfer is the other arrangement: quoted for your own journey and held once you accept it. Both are explained below, along with the runs to Saint-Émilion, the Médoc, Arcachon, Cap Ferret and the Dordogne.
Vehicles
Seats are the easy half. Count the boot first.
Four travellers with four large suitcases have outgrown a saloon long before they have run out of seats. On a run that may end at a city kerb twenty minutes away or at a gate in the Médoc two hours off, the luggage picks the class far more often than the passengers do.
The capacities below belong to the network and hold in every country it covers, because a seven-seat van is a seven-seat van wherever it is parked. What is particular here is the spread of work the same short list has to cover: a hotel behind the Grand Théâtre and a house outside Sarlat are chosen from the same table and are nothing like the same choice.
| Class | Passengers | Luggage | Booked for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saloon | Up to 4 | 3 large (3 passengers), or 2 large and 2 hand bags (4 passengers) | Two people with a case each going to a hotel in the Chartrons or an apartment behind the Grand Théâtre. The commonest booking off a morning arrival, and the one that falls over when a third suitcase appears. |
| Estate car | Up to 4 | 3 large and 3 hand bags | The same four seats with a load space behind them, which is what a week at a château wants once the cases, the coats and the case of wine coming home are all counted. |
| Executive car | Up to 3 | 2 large and 2 hand bags | One seat fewer and a cabin worth having for an arrival heading straight into a meeting: an office at Bordeaux Lac, a campus at Pessac, a hangar at Mérignac. |
| MPV, 5-seater | Up to 5 | Up to 4 large suitcases | Five travellers kept together rather than split between two cars, which on the road to the basin means two routes, two drivers and two different arrival times. |
| MPV, 6-seater | Up to 6 | 4 to 5 large suitcases | Six seats over a deep boot: the Arcachon fortnight, with the pushchair flat underneath and the beach things on top of it. |
| Executive 7-seater | Up to 7 | Up to 7 bags | Seven places for the runs counted in hours rather than minutes — Sarlat, Biarritz, La Rochelle — with nothing riding on anybody’s knees. |
| Executive MPV | Up to 7 | Up to 7 bags | The same seven places finished to a standard a company is content to put a visitor in, which is the booking made when somebody is being received rather than merely fetched. |
| Van, 8-seater | Up to 8 | Up to 7 bags | The upper limit of what counts as a car booking at all. Put a ninth person in the party and it becomes a group movement instead. |
| 16-seat minicoach | Up to 16 | Luggage confirmed with the booking | Sixteen places for the wedding or the wine trip that comes in on a single aircraft: one car, one place to gather, one round of loading. |
Three large cases will go into a saloon that is carrying three people; put a fourth passenger in and the allowance drops to two large and two hand bags. An estate keeps those seats and lengthens what is behind them, which is what a week among the vines generally turns out to want once the outbound cases and the bottles coming home have both been counted. A Bordeaux Airport executive taxi gives up the fourth seat for a quieter cabin, and it is usually ordered by an office rather than by whoever will be sitting in it, which is why the business section asks for two telephone numbers.
Most families here end in an MPV: five or six people and everything that travelled with them, including the pushchair that never folds as small as the photograph promised. Above it sit the two trims of the Bordeaux Airport 7-seater taxi, standard and executive, and then the Bordeaux Airport 8-seater transfer, which is the largest thing the network books as one car.
Add a ninth traveller and what you are booking stops being a car. It becomes a group movement, run as one journey rather than three vehicles trying to keep each other in sight on the road to Saint-Émilion. A Bordeaux Airport minibus transfer is quoted on the same few details as a saloon — the address, the hour, and a bag count somebody has actually done — with one addition that matters on a wine trip: how much is going home with you that did not come out.
Nowhere below is a figure attached to a class. The class is one input into what one journey costs, and whether it can be supplied on your date is settled by the booking system and by nothing else.
Reviews
Written by passengers, held by the platforms that collected them.
The panel below is served by the review platforms themselves, and every line in it was written by the traveller whose journey it describes. Nothing was drafted, selected or reordered at this end.
There is no separate rating for Bordeaux here, and nobody has manufactured one to occupy the gap. The panel shows the network as a whole, written by whoever chose to write, departing from wherever they were.
Nothing has arrived in this space yet. Either the panel is still loading or the review platform was unreachable when this browser asked for it, so the same journeys are kept on our own reviews page.
At a glance
The whole of it, compressed into one table.
What is booked here is one vehicle for your party alone, at a figure you have read before the day arrives. The rank outside Hall A is a different thing: a public service on a meter, with national ceilings above it and a departmental order inside them.
Every row returns in full below with its publisher named. What the airport prints is credited to the airport, what the tariff order sets is credited to the order, what the transport operators charge is credited to them, and anything of ours is labelled as ours and nothing more.
| The question | The answer |
|---|---|
| Airport | Bordeaux Airport (BOD), Aéroport de Bordeaux-Mérignac in French |
| Also written | Bordeaux–Mérignac, and Mérignac by most people who live near it |
| Where it is | In the commune of Mérignac, Gironde, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France |
| Passenger buildings | Hall A, Hall B and billi, which the airport writes in lower case |
| When they are open | Closed to the public between midnight and four in the morning |
| Official taxi rank | Outside Hall A, at the outside entrance |
| When taxis are there | Every day, from the first flight to the last |
| Fixed airport fare | None. France sets them at six places and this is not one of them |
| What the airport reports instead | About €35 by day and €45 at night to the centre, as an average and not a promise |
| What a rank taxi charges | a metered journey from the rank outside Hall A, charged on whichever of the four settings the hour and the return require |
| What may never be added | any fixed price at all, because none is set for this airport, and any airport surcharge, because the law forbids one |
| Our fares | Built from the journey you describe, then held for as long as the booking stands |
| Flight watching | Included on arrivals, and keyed to the flight number on the booking |
| Free waiting after landing | 60 minutes once the wheels are down, extended to 90 when the delay is a baggage belt |
| Public transport | Tram line F and the 30’DIRECT coach, both run by operators rather than by the airport |
| Where the journeys go | Bordeaux, the métropole, Saint-Émilion, the Médoc, the Graves, Arcachon, Cap Ferret, the Dordogne and the Basque coast |
| Booking | Online at any hour, subject to availability |
It is the Aéroport de Bordeaux-Mérignac, BOD to an airline and LFBD to a pilot, and it stands in the commune of Mérignac rather than in Bordeaux itself. Mérignac is a city in its own right, the second largest in the Gironde, and the airport sits inside it rather than inside Bordeaux, which is why a Bordeaux Airport to Mérignac taxi is a local run rather than a journey out of town. In French the same service is searched for as a taxi aéroport Bordeaux, as a transfert aéroport Bordeaux-Mérignac, or by anybody who wants a car and a driver rather than a rank as a chauffeur privé Bordeaux. A Bordeaux–Mérignac Airport taxi, a BOD airport taxi and a Bordeaux Airport transfer are all the same arrangement under different search habits, and a private Bordeaux Airport transfer is the English way of asking for a car rather than a queue.
One fact deserves lifting out of the table before anything else. All three buildings are closed to the public between midnight and four in the morning, and the airport reserves the right to change those hours without notice. If your flight leaves at six in the morning, you cannot sit inside the terminal from three; and if you land after midnight, the building you walk out of is closing behind you.
What a traveller wrote about one journey says nothing about the cost of the next. That comes from the form, on the day, for the route you are actually taking.
Terminals
Three buildings, one airport, and a walk between two of them that is now outdoors.
What is the difference between Hall A, Hall B and billi? The airline you are flying decides which one you use, and the three are not laid out the same way. There are three passenger buildings and not one: Hall A, Hall B and the low-cost terminal the airport writes as billi, always in lower case.
Hall A is where the rank is, so a Bordeaux Airport Hall A taxi is simply the taxi everybody else is also queueing for: out of arrivals on the ground floor, through the doors, and into the line. It is also where most of the airport’s shops, catering and car hire sit, on both the departure and the arrival levels.
Hall B is Air France and the public transport end of the airport: the tram stop stands in front of the express car park beside it and the airport coach leaves from gate 7. What Hall B does not have is a rank of its own, so a Bordeaux Airport Hall B taxi means walking to Hall A. The airport has published a notice that the indoor route between Halls A and B is closed on both the departures and the arrivals levels, and that the walk between them is now outside and signposted, so allow for weather and for a few minutes more than the map suggests.
billi is the low-cost building, and the one thing to know about it is structural rather than commercial: arrivals and departures share a single floor instead of being stacked one above the other. A Bordeaux Airport billi terminal taxi is therefore arranged exactly like any other, but the instruction in the confirmation matters more, because there is no upstairs to be told to go to.
Hall assignments move. Nothing on a page can be relied on for an individual flight, which is the reason a booking is keyed to the flight number rather than to a building.
Three sorts of money run through everything below and none of them is mixed with another: what the airport reports a metered journey averages, what the tariff order allows a meter to charge, and what a private journey is quoted at.
Booking
Eight answers, and what each of them changes.
Can you pre-book a Bordeaux Airport taxi? You can, and it is the only way to arrive with the figure already settled. To pre-book Bordeaux Airport taxi journeys is to land with a Bordeaux Airport taxi booking that already carries your name, your flight and your destination. The form asks eight questions and six of the answers between them choose the vehicle.
Both directions use the same eight questions, and the answers carry different weight in each. An arrival is governed by an aeroplane, which a car is content to wait for. A departure is governed by a counter that shuts at a stated minute and waits for nothing.
A Bordeaux Airport arrivals taxi booked in advance needs four things: the flight number, the date, the destination written out and a real count of the bags. The aircraft is then watched and the meeting arrangement goes into the confirmation instead of being improvised at the terminal doors. At airport arrivals your driver waits at the agreed meeting point with a name board and helps with the bags.
What you have bought is the car, not a place in it. There is no collection en route, no extra address on the way, and nobody sitting aboard waiting on an aircraft that is not yours. When the day may finish on the far shore of the Bassin d’Arcachon, that distinction is worth an afternoon.
Outbound, the car collects from a hotel, an apartment, a château, a campsite reception or a house with no number on it, and sets you down at departures. To réserver taxi aéroport Bordeaux for an early flight, do it the day you buy the ticket: the first tram of the morning does not reach the terminal in time for every departure, and the building itself is shut until four.
Runs of two hours or more — Sarlat, Biarritz, La Rochelle — are covered under long-distance transfers, and a collection in the hours when nothing scheduled is running has separate guidance of its own.
Your figure comes out of the journey: which class, which road, what hour, and whatever has been added to it — an extra address, a seat for a child, a bicycle. Every one of those is something you typed, which is why half an address produces a figure that has to be built again. The fares section goes through the inputs one at a time, and explains why no rank in Bordeaux can answer the same question with a single number.
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Which building you land in changes the walk and the meeting point. It does not change what the journey costs, because a quotation is built from the two addresses rather than from the door you came out of.
Pick-up
The rank, the stops, and the place a booked car is actually standing.
Where is the official taxi rank at Bordeaux Airport? Taxis wait outside Hall A, at the outside entrance, and the airport says they are there every day from the first flight to the last. That is the Bordeaux Airport taxi rank in one line, and it is the only one: there is no second rank at Hall B and none at billi.
That is the only vehicle point the airport publishes besides the bus and tram stops: there is no designated chauffeur or private-hire bay anywhere in its pages. It also lists the local taxi companies that work the rank, so that a passenger who wants a public taxi can telephone one in advance rather than queue for it, which is a genuinely useful thing to know if you would rather telephone than queue.
The Bordeaux Airport taxi pickup point that matters is the one written on your confirmation. Because the airport publishes no chauffeur bay, anybody offering an official private-hire point here, as though the airport had designated one, is describing something that does not exist in its pages.
Which leaves a Bordeaux Airport Meet and Greet as something with edges rather than a slogan: a person holding your name, help with the bags, and a spot fixed beforehand. What meet and greet actually covers takes two minutes to read and is worth them.
What separates a rank taxi from a private driver here is the purchase rather than the pavement. Anybody may join the queue at Hall A and pay what the meter reads at the far end. A car booked beforehand carries your name, a sum fixed in advance and Bordeaux Airport flight tracking underneath it, which turns a late aircraft into a later collection rather than a missed one.
Outside, the roof sign shows the word taxi and the commune the licence belongs to, lit green when the vehicle is free and red when it is taken, and a plate carries the licence number and the department, which between them let you check before you get in that the vehicle is a licensed taxi and that it is free. A first landing in France is better served by the guide written for arriving somewhere unfamiliar than by eight steps alone, and if you are expecting an app to behave the way it does at home, read how ride-hailing works at European airports first.
There is no charge for asking and nothing is owed for it. A figure arrives once the destination, the class and the flight are entered, and you have read it well before a booking exists.
Fares
Two published averages, four meter settings, and one price that is agreed in advance.
How much is a taxi from Bordeaux Airport to the city centre? The airport reports about €35 by day and €45 at night — and calls both of them information rather than a price. So the Bordeaux Airport to city centre taxi fare is the one question here with a published answer, and even that answer is an average. A Bordeaux Airport taxi price and a Bordeaux Airport taxi cost are the same question asked twice; in French it is the prix taxi aéroport Bordeaux.
For the city centre the airport gives about €35 by day and about €45 at night. It labels both as information only, and says they may vary with the traffic; they are averages of a metered journey rather than a price anybody has promised. Anybody quoting either figure as the Bordeaux Airport taxi fare has turned an average into a promise that no one has made.
A French meter runs on four settings rather than one: A for a daytime journey with a loaded return to the rank, B for the same at night or on a Sunday or public holiday, C for a daytime journey the driver has to return from empty, and D for that return at night or on a Sunday. That last pair is the one travellers never expect: a journey out to a village in the Médoc, from which the driver has no realistic prospect of a fare back, is charged on a different setting from the same distance within the city.
The night rate may add up to half again to the kilometre, and an empty return, or a journey outside the zone the vehicle is licensed to stand in, may double it; snow or ice with winter equipment may add up to half again, and the night and snow increases may not be applied together. The total may be rounded up to the next whole cent, and a driver is free to charge less than the maximum but never more.
The ceilings are national and are reset every year, with the new figures taking effect on the first of February and each driver given two months to have the meter adjusted. Once a meter has been adjusted, a coloured letter is stamped on its dial, which is how an inspector, and a passenger, can see that the vehicle is on the current scale. Inside those ceilings each département sets its own figures by prefectural order, and the Gironde order is published by the prefecture; the figures that apply to your journey are the ones displayed inside the vehicle, so the figures below are the national maxima rather than the Gironde’s own, and the notice in the cab is what governs your journey.
| Item | Maximum |
|---|---|
| Minimum fare for any journey | €8.00 |
| Hire charge at the start | €4.48 |
| Per kilometre | €1.30 |
| Per hour, waiting or crawling | €42.15 |
| Each passenger from the fifth | €4.00 |
| Each bulky item of luggage | €2.00 |
A notice inside the vehicle has to carry the hourly and kilometric rates, the hire charge, every supplement and the conditions for it, any fixed prices that exist, when a receipt is compulsory, that a card may be used, and an address for complaints. A receipt is compulsory once the fare passes a published threshold and may be asked for below it, and it has to show the date, the start and finish times, the operator, the registration, an address for complaints, the fare before supplements, each supplement and the total. Cash and card both have to be accepted whatever the amount, a cheque may be refused if the refusal is displayed on the window, and a tip is optional. None of that is obscure and all of it is enforceable, which makes a rank taxi here a good deal more predictable than its reputation.
What a private Bordeaux transfer costs is neither an average nor a reading taken at the end. It is calculated for the journey you have described — the far address, the class, the hour, whatever has been added — and put in front of you before anything is confirmed. Searched in French it is the prix taxi aéroport Bordeaux question; the difference is that this answer is fixed at the moment you accept it, and the traffic on the rocade afterwards is not your problem.
| Arrangement | What sets the figure | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-booked private transfer | Built from the two addresses and shown to you before you commit | One vehicle, your party only, from the door you give to the door you give |
| Official taxi from the rank | The meter, on one of four settings, inside the department’s maxima | Door to door, after a queue at the Hall A kerb |
| Tram line F | A ticket price the transport authority publishes | A tram stop, and whatever walk is left at the far end |
| The 30’DIRECT coach | A seat price the coach operator publishes | Gare Saint-Jean, and the last leg still to arrange |
Not one of the amounts above was set by us. Two are the airport’s reported averages, four are national ceilings from the tariff order, and the rest belong to transport operators. Any of them may be revised by its owner without notice, and what is displayed inside the vehicle governs the journey you actually take.
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Standing time costs a driver something at every airport there is. On a booking made here it has already been counted into the sum you agreed to, so it never arrives afterwards as a surprise.
Delays
A late aircraft moves the hour. It does not touch the arrangement.
Put a flight number on the booking and the car is watching the aircraft, not the hour. What if my flight is delayed therefore has a one-line answer: the pick-up shifts along with the aeroplane, and free time begins the moment the wheels are down rather than at whatever the ticket says.
Rebooked onto another flight? Send the new number and the existing arrangement moves onto it, with nothing cancelled. A diversion is the harder case, because the journey now begins at another airport altogether; Toulouse and Nantes are the usual alternates for this coast. Tell us from the aircraft rather than from the hall.
What the service covers end to end is described on our airport taxi page. Where free waiting ends is a term rather than a sales point, so it lives in the terms and conditions that your confirmation links straight to.
Every amount in this section was published by the airport or set by the tariff order, and each is credited to its owner. No transfer price of ours appears, because the same form books a hotel in the Chartrons and a house outside Sarlat.
Tram and coach
What the tram and the coach do well, and the point at which they stop.
Does Bordeaux Airport have a tram connection? Yes — line F runs from the airport into the city and on to Gare Saint-Jean, and a direct coach, the navette aéroport Bordeaux most French signage calls it, serves the same station. Between them they are the honest answer for a good many arrivals and the wrong answer for a good many others.
Tram line F runs from a stop in front of the express car park beside Hall B into the city, calling at the Hôtel de Ville and the Pellegrin hospital on its way to Gare Saint-Jean. The airport puts the run at about forty-five minutes to Gare Saint-Jean and about thirty-five to the Hôtel de Ville in the centre. It runs every ten minutes on weekdays and Saturdays and every fifteen on Sundays, from five in the morning until midnight, and until one in the morning on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
A single ticket is €1.90 and a book of ten is €15.70, both as the airport prints them. Tickets come from the press shop in the terminal, from the machines beside the stop in front of Hall B, or through the operator’s own application. Tickets are the easy part; the luggage is not, and a tram at half past eight in the morning with two large cases and a pushchair is a different proposition from the same tram at two in the afternoon.
The 30’DIRECT coach runs between gate 7 at Hall B and the city centre exit of Gare Saint-Jean, in about thirty minutes under normal traffic, every day of the year including holidays. Fares start at €8 a person as the airport prints it, with children under five carried free and a discount for booking a return online. A seat is guaranteed, larger items travel free, including a folded pushchair, a bicycle or a surfboard, and a wheelchair space can be reserved by electronic mail up to three days before departure.
| The question | Tram or coach | A pre-booked transfer |
|---|---|---|
| Where it ends | A tram stop or the station forecourt, with the last leg still to arrange | The address you typed, including a château gate |
| What it costs | A published ticket or seat price, per person | Quoted per vehicle, before you book |
| Luggage | As much as you can carry up a step and lift yourself | A class chosen for the cases, and somebody else doing the lifting |
| A delayed flight | The timetable has not heard about it | The booking moves with the aircraft |
| Late at night | Nothing runs between the small hours and five | Arranged for whatever hour the flight lands |
| Where each one wins | Travelling light, one or two of you, and finishing near a stop | Children, luggage, a party, a dead hour, or an address the line never reaches |
None of that makes the tram a poor option — for a single traveller with a cabin bag going to the Hôtel de Ville it is plainly the right one, and a Bordeaux Airport shuttle vs taxi argument misses the point if the shuttle happens to stop where you are going. The moment it stops being right is sharp and easy to spot: a second suitcase, a child, a vineyard twenty kilometres off the line, or a landing after midnight.
When the free allowance runs out, what takes over is the rate written into the terms — deliberately there and deliberately not here. Any charge typed onto a page that is selling something goes stale and commits nobody.
Into Bordeaux
One airport, a dozen communes, and a river down the middle of it.
The two figures the airport reports describe a metered run to the centre, and they describe nothing else. A Bordeaux Airport to Bordeaux city centre taxi is one journey out of the list below; a Bordeaux Airport to Pessac taxi, a Bordeaux Airport to Talence taxi and a run over the bridges to Cenon are three more, and no published figure covers any of them.
What they have in common is that the address does the work. Bordeaux’s centre is heavily pedestrianised, the tram occupies several of the streets that are left, and the river is crossed at a handful of points. None of that changes a quotation, which is built from the two addresses; all of it changes where a car can actually stop.
The run the airport prices for you. Place de la Bourse and the Miroir d’Eau, the Grand Théâtre and Place de la Comédie, Place des Quinconces, the Hôtel de Ville and the Cathédrale Saint-André. Most of it is walking streets, so what a driver needs is not the square but the last corner a car may legally stop at.
The old quarters, and the narrowest of the streets. The lanes behind the quays, with Rue Sainte-Catherine running through the middle of them as the longest pedestrian street in the city. A hotel here is reached from a named corner rather than from its own door, and the hotel will tell you which corner if you ask.
North along the river, and easier to reach. The old wine-merchant quarter and the docks beyond it, with the Cité du Vin and the submarine base at the far end. Wider streets, more kerb, and a straightforward drop-off compared with the centre.
Offices, conferences and the administrative city. The modern administrative quarter west of the centre, the park north of it, and the exhibition and congress halls out at Bordeaux Lac. Conference traffic arrives in waves, which is the argument for having the car booked rather than found.
The station, and a train that will not wait. The principal railway station, south of the centre on the left bank, and the end of both the tram and the airport coach. If you are connecting onto a train, the margin matters more than the route.
Across the river, and a different approach. The right bank opposite the old city, with the Jardin Botanique and the Darwin site. Reached by one of the bridges, which is the one thing that can change the journey from predictable to not.
The commune the airport is in. The town centre, Mérignac Soleil, Capeyron, Arlac, Chemin Long and Beutre, along with the business parks and the hotels nearest the runway. If your hotel is one of the airport ones, ask whether it already runs a shuttle before booking anything.
University, research and Pape Clément. Pessac town centre, Alouette, the two railway halts, the university and research campuses and the Château Pape Clément vineyard inside the suburbs. Several campus entrances are gated, so name the building.
Students, academics and quiet streets. The university quarter south of the city with Gradignan beyond it. Term-time arrivals, visiting academics and families, and a street grid where the building number does more work than the district.
The southern and riverside communes. Bègles and Villenave-d’Ornon on the left bank, Floirac across the water with the Arkéa Arena. Concert and match traffic is the one thing that changes the arithmetic here.
Over the bridges, up the slope. The hillside communes on the right bank, reached over the Pont d’Aquitaine or the Pont Chaban-Delmas. The approach road matters more than the distance.
The near north-west, closest of all to the runway. A ring of communes between the airport and the city, several of them a shorter run than the centre itself. Residential streets, so the house number is the address.
Where the métropole turns into the Médoc. The last of the suburbs on the road north, with the first of the vineyards immediately beyond them. Useful to name precisely, because the same road carries on for another hour.
For anything inside the historic centre, give the property’s own name rather than the square you recognise from a photograph. The hotel will know which corner a vehicle may legally wait at, and that corner is the useful instruction. The hotel transfers page covers apartments with keypads and everything else without a reception desk.
The Bordeaux Métropole is more than thirty communes, and a good number of them are a shorter run from the runway than the cathedral is. Le Haillan, Eysines and Le Bouscat sit between the airport and the city; Pessac and Talence are south of it; Bègles and Villenave-d’Ornon further south again; Cenon, Lormont and Floirac are across the water. The name of the commune narrows it down. The street and the number finish the job.
Both fares belong to their operators and both can be changed by them. The two printed below are the ones the airport itself prints; anything else you have read is one site copying another.
Saint-Jean
The station run, where the margin matters more than the route.
A Bordeaux Airport to Bordeaux Saint-Jean station taxi is booked for the train, not for the station. The road journey is ordinary; what is not ordinary is that the thing at the end of it leaves whether or not you are on it.
Saint-Jean is the city’s principal railway station, south of the centre on the left bank, and it is where both the tram and the airport coach finish. For a traveller with a reserved seat on a high-speed service, the question is never which of the three is quickest on a good day. It is which of them still works on a bad one.
Give the train time when you book, not just the pick-up time. It changes nothing about the price and everything about the hour the car is ordered for, and it means the margin is built in by somebody who does this route regularly rather than guessed at by somebody who does not. Our station transfers page covers the reverse journey and the connections either side of it.
From the station to the airport the same arithmetic runs backwards, with one extra factor: the terminals are closed to the public overnight, so an early train into Bordeaux followed by a wait inside the airport is not always the plan it looks like on paper.
The airport’s two figures describe a metered run to the centre and nothing else. They say nothing about Pessac, nothing about Blanquefort and nothing about the far side of the river.
Saint-Émilion
Where the estate name does more work than the village.
Can you book a taxi from Bordeaux Airport to Saint-Émilion? Yes, and the booking needs the property rather than the appellation. A Bordeaux Airport to Saint-Émilion taxi that says only Saint-Émilion is a quotation for an average nobody is travelling.
The limestone village sits on a hill above its own vineyards, and its centre is steep, narrow and partly closed to vehicles. A hotel inside the walls and a château twenty minutes out are different drop-offs and different journeys.
Searched in French it is the taxi aéroport Bordeaux Saint-Émilion question, and the same caution applies in either language: send the estate, the hamlet and the commune, because the roads between them often have no names at all.
The best-known name on the list. A hill village of limestone lanes above its own vineyards, and the single commonest wine-country request made at this airport. The old centre is steep, narrow and partly closed to vehicles, so a château or a guesthouse outside it is a quite different drop-off from a hotel in the middle.
Next door, and almost entirely estates. A small appellation of scattered properties with very few landmarks and almost no street signs worth the name. The estate’s own name and its full postal address are what reach the gate.
The town the whole area is organised around. A bastide town on the Dordogne with the railway station most wine visitors actually use, along with the hotels, the restaurants and the shops that the villages around it do not have.
The quieter appellations either side. Fronsac on the near bank, Castillon further east, and the long ridge of the Entre-deux-Mers between the two rivers. Rural addresses, often a named lieu-dit rather than a street.
A Bordeaux Airport to Pomerol taxi is the hardest booking on this part of the page to get right, because the appellation is small, almost entirely private property, and has very little in the way of signage or street names. A Bordeaux Airport to Libourne taxi is the opposite: a town with a station, hotels, restaurants and shops that the villages around it do not have, and the practical base for a good many wine visits.
A connection you have to make changes no part of the arithmetic and every part of the margin. The margin is the cheap half of it, because it costs nothing at all until the day you need it.
Médoc and Graves
North along the estuary, and south up the river.
The vineyards the arrivals hall fills up for are spread over a wide area in several directions: Saint-Émilion and Pomerol to the east, the Médoc north along the estuary, and the Graves and Sauternes south up the Garonne. That single geographical fact is why a question about the price of a wine-country transfer has no general answer: the directions are different, the distances are different, and the road north narrows as it goes.
First of the Médoc villages going north. The nearest of the great Médoc communes to the city, on the D2 up the left bank of the estuary. Estates line the road, and several share an entrance with a neighbour, so the property name is essential.
The middle Médoc, and the best-known châteaux. Pauillac is the working town of the upper Médoc with a quay on the estuary; Saint-Julien is the parish south of it. An hour and more from the airport on a road that narrows as it goes.
The top of the appellation, and the two inland ones. Saint-Estèphe is the last of the famous communes going north; Moulis and Listrac sit inland of the main road. Addresses here are frequently a château name and a hamlet and nothing more.
The far north, where the Médoc meets the sea. Lesparre is the administrative town of the northern Médoc, Soulac the resort at the mouth of the estuary. These are among the longest runs from the airport that stay inside the Gironde.
South up the Garonne, in the sweet-wine country. Two small communes on the left bank south of the city, with Langon as the nearest town of any size. Properties are scattered among the vines and signposted lightly.
The Graves, closest of the wine country to the airport. A band of estates immediately south of the suburbs, several of them with hotels and spas attached. The nearest serious wine destination to the runway, and the one most often booked for a single night.
The right bank of the Garonne, and the road south. Cadillac on the river with its château, Langon further up as the market town for the whole southern Gironde. Both are straightforward motorway runs for most of the way.
A Bordeaux Airport to Margaux taxi is the shortest of the famous ones and a Bordeaux Airport to Pauillac taxi is comfortably over an hour, with Saint-Julien between them and a Bordeaux Airport to Saint-Estèphe taxi longer again. The D2 strings them together and the estates line it, several of them sharing an entrance with a neighbour, which is the reason a property name beats a village name every time.
A Bordeaux Airport to Léognan taxi is among the shortest wine runs from this airport — the Pessac-Léognan estates begin almost where the suburbs end — and a Bordeaux Airport to Sauternes taxi is a longer one up the left bank of the Garonne. Several of the Graves properties have hotels and spas attached, which makes them the one part of the wine country regularly booked for a single night.
A wine-country run is priced from the property, not from the appellation. Two estates in the same commune can be twenty minutes apart on roads with no names.
The basin
A lagoon you have to drive round, and a peninsula of nine villages.
Can you book a Bordeaux Airport taxi to Arcachon? Yes, and the same booking to Cap Ferret is a very different journey, however close the two look on a map. The Bassin d’Arcachon is a near-circular tidal lagoon with a single narrow opening to the Atlantic, so the road round it is long and the north and south shores are nothing like the same journey.
The main resort on the basin. The Ville d’Hiver up the hill, the seafront and the jetties below it, and Le Moulleau, Pereire and Abatilles strung out westwards. The town has its own railway station, and in August it has its own traffic.
The dune, and the road that stops short of it. Pyla-sur-Mer and La Teste-de-Buch sit below the largest sand dune in Europe. Visitor parking and the access paths are arranged separately from the hotels and campsites, so name the accommodation rather than the dune.
Nine villages, one road, and a long way round. Cap Ferret itself at the point, with Bélisaire, L’Herbe, Le Canon, Piraillan, Grand Piquey, Petit Piquey, Claouey and Lège behind it. The village name is the booking; the words Cap Ferret alone can be half an hour out.
The other side of the water entirely. Andernos with Arès, Lanton, Audenge and Biganos around it. Andernos is a short run from the airport and Cap Ferret is a long one, although the two look close together on a map, because the basin has to be driven round.
Two different places with one name. The town sits by its lake and the surf resort sits on the ocean several kilometres further west. Booking the wrong one is the most frequent mistake made on this route, and it costs a quarter of an hour at the end of a long day.
The lake country north of Lacanau. Carcans and its lakeside village of Maubuisson, with Hourtin and its own lake beyond. Campsites and holiday parks here are large, so the reception entrance is the useful address.
Over the departmental line, into the Landes. The town, the beach resort and the lakes between them are three separate destinations sharing a name. The pine forest road south is slow in high summer and empty the rest of the year.
A Bordeaux Airport to Arcachon taxi lands in a town with a hill quarter, a seafront and several outlying districts, so the district name earns its place in the booking. A Bordeaux Airport to Dune du Pilat taxi is really a booking to Pyla-sur-Mer or La Teste-de-Buch, because the dune itself has visitor parking and footpaths rather than an address a car stops at. Searched in French the first of those is the taxi aéroport Bordeaux Arcachon question.
Lège-Cap-Ferret is a peninsula of separate villages strung along one road, which is why the village name matters more than the words Cap Ferret. A Bordeaux Airport to Cap Ferret taxi and a Bordeaux Airport to Andernos-les-Bains taxi face each other across the water and are nothing like the same run: Andernos is reached quickly off the main road, and the point of the peninsula is most of an hour further round.
North of the basin the Atlantic coast is a line of surf towns and lakes behind a pine forest. A Bordeaux Airport to Lacanau taxi needs to say whether it means the town by the lake or Lacanau-Océan on the sea, which is the single most frequent mistake on this route. A Bordeaux Airport to Hourtin taxi and the Carcans and Maubuisson bookings are the same lake country further north, and a Bordeaux Airport to Biscarrosse taxi crosses into the Landes to a town, a beach resort and a pair of lakes that again share one name.
The road north narrows as it goes, so what these runs cost follows the address rather than the map distance. Each is quoted as its own journey before anybody agrees to anything.
Long distance
The journeys measured in hours, and what changes when they are.
Can you book a taxi to Bergerac or the Dordogne? You can, and these are the bookings where confirming the vehicle before you fly stops being advice and starts being the point. Nothing on this list is a run anybody wants to negotiate at a rank at midnight.
East into the Dordogne. A river town with its own airport and its own vineyards, and the usual gateway for anybody staying in the western Dordogne. Rural properties beyond it need a full address and a line of arrival notes.
The deep Dordogne, and a long drive. The medieval town at the centre of the Périgord Noir, with the caves and the castles around it. The old centre restricts vehicles, so an accessible drop-off is agreed in advance.
South, down the Landes motorway. Biarritz and Bayonne with Anglet between them, and Hossegor, Capbreton, Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Hendaye along the same coast. Genuinely long-distance work, confirmed before it is quoted.
North into the Charente-Maritime. The old port and the towns around it, with Royan on the way. A road transfer is a road transfer: a ferry or an island crossing is a separate arrangement and is not inside it.
The far side of the Gironde estuary. A resort town at the mouth of the estuary, reached either the long way round or by the ferry from the Médoc. Say which, because they are different journeys.
Inland, along the valleys. Market towns up the Garonne and out into the Landes, mostly reached on motorway or good trunk road. Business and family traffic rather than holiday traffic.
The cities beyond the region. Each is a real booking and each is a long one. A journey to another city is quoted as a journey, and it carries no onward airport arrangement with it unless one has been asked for.
A Bordeaux Airport to Bergerac taxi follows the river east and is the usual arrival for the western Périgord. A Bordeaux Airport to Sarlat taxi carries on well beyond it into the Périgord Noir, where the old centre restricts vehicles and the accessible drop-off is worth agreeing in advance. Rural properties out here frequently have a hamlet name in place of a street, and a line of arrival notes is worth more than a postcode.
A Bordeaux Airport to Biarritz taxi runs down the Landes motorway to the Basque coast, with Bayonne, Anglet, Hossegor, Capbreton, Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Hendaye on the same stretch. Going the other way, a Bordeaux Airport to La Rochelle taxi crosses into the Charente-Maritime and a Bordeaux Airport to Royan taxi stops at the mouth of the estuary. A road transfer is a road transfer: if an island or a ferry is involved, that is a separate arrangement and it is not inside the quotation.
A Bordeaux Airport to Agen taxi runs up the Garonne valley with Marmande on the way, and Mont-de-Marsan, Dax and Pau lie south of it. A Bordeaux Airport to Toulouse taxi is a genuine city-to-city journey, as are Périgueux, Brive-la-Gaillarde and Limoges. Each is quoted as a journey in its own right, and none of them carries an onward airport arrangement with it unless you have asked for one. Where the journey ends at another airport, our Toulouse Airport page covers the other end of it.
The water in the middle has to be driven round. That single fact is why two addresses that look adjacent are quoted very differently, and it is worth knowing before you book.
Wine holidays
A transfer is a journey. A tasting itinerary is not.
A standard airport transfer takes you from one address to another, and calling it a guided wine experience would be a lie about what you have bought. If you want several properties in one day, with waiting between them, that is a different arrangement and it is priced differently.
The distinction matters more here than almost anywhere, because the two things look similar from the outside and cost quite different amounts. A transfer is sold on two addresses. An itinerary is sold on time: the vehicle and the driver are yours for a stated number of hours and the route can change inside them.
Access is the one thing worth confirming rather than assuming. Many of these properties are private estates with gates, and a booking that names the property lets the arrangement be settled in advance instead of at a closed barrier after dark. For a party arriving together, the group transfers page covers the vehicles, and for anything built around a date in the diary there is the note on event transport.
Kilometres are only one ingredient in a journey of this length. Each is arranged as a single run and exactly what the figure takes in is written out before either side commits.
Business
Landings that start a working day rather than a fortnight off.
Put two mobile numbers on a Bordeaux Airport chauffeur service booking: the passenger’s and the person arranging it. Without the first, every update goes to an office rather than to whoever is standing in the hall wondering where the car is — which is the one place it would have done any good.
Bordeaux works for a living as well as drinking. Mérignac is one of the larger aerospace and defence clusters in France, the research and university campuses are at Pessac and Talence, the congress and exhibition halls are out at Bordeaux Lac, and the wine trade itself runs on meetings.
None of those is a hotel, and several are a gate with a security desk and a visitor register. Put the authorised entrance in the booking notes rather than leaving the satnav to guess at an industrial perimeter.
Repeat journeys, invoicing to an account and conference arrivals all go through corporate transfers. A booking made here implies no partnership with the airport, with any venue or with any company, and nothing written above should be read as one.
A transfer is a journey between two addresses. An itinerary with stops is a different arrangement with a different price, and the two are never quoted as though they were the same thing.
Families
Suitcases, a pushchair, and two children who woke up on descent.
It is the boot that settles a family booking, almost never the seat count. A good many of the classes listed above hold six people. Far fewer hold six people together with six large cases and a buggy that does not fold.
Seats for children are asked for when you book and carried at no extra charge. What the booking needs is a head count and an age for each of them, because a rear-facing carrier, a forward-facing toddler seat and a simple booster are three distinct fittings and the one you need has to go out on the car. Which suits which is set out in our guide to child seats on airport transfers, and before a first trip with a buggy and a connection it is worth ten minutes with what we have written about travelling with children.
A group booking earns its keep in the ten minutes past the customs doors, which is when parties fall apart. One vehicle means one place to stand, one round of loading and one arrival time at the other end. Weddings in the vines and reunions at a rented château habitually arrive on one flight and then discover they are seventeen people with twenty-two bags; the rest is on the group transfers page.
Accounts, invoicing and payment terms are arranged directly, company by company. Nothing written for a general audience can bind either side to them in advance.
Accessibility
Confirm the vehicle first; book it second.
A Bordeaux Airport wheelchair accessible transfer is settled in advance or not at all. The equipment is particular to the person using it, and a car that works for one traveller is useless to the next, so whether a vehicle suits is established before any booking is taken.
First, no supplement may lawfully be charged for a wheelchair in a French taxi; that rule sits alongside the one forbidding an airport surcharge. Second, the airport coach carries a wheelchair space that can be reserved by electronic mail up to three days before departure, which makes it a real alternative for a traveller going to the station rather than a theoretical one.
Those four take messages back and forth to answer, which makes this the single arrangement on the whole page that will not come together inside an hour. What can be fixed beforehand is in our guide to accessible vehicles.
You will find no figure anywhere in this section, and that is a choice. What a family is charged is the vehicle; what picks the vehicle is the luggage; so the luggage is the thing to count honestly.
Going back
Going home: the half of the trip nobody plans and everybody should.
Leaving takes more planning than arriving did, and at this airport there is an extra reason why. An arrival has give in it; a departure has none, because check-in closes at a printed minute — and the terminal itself is shut to the public until four in the morning.
Put the outbound and the homeward leg on a single booking wherever that is possible. The return is then settled before you have even left the house, which counts for most when the flight departs before any tram runs and the property is forty minutes off the main road.
Send the outbound flight number along with the collection time. Where the aeroplane is late before you have even locked the door, the car shifts with it instead of idling at a barrier.
The return from the wine country or the coast is the one that needs a line of notes. A gate that is manned at ten in the morning may be locked at five; a campsite reception may not open until seven; a track may be unnamed and unlit. None of that is unusual here, and all of it is easier arranged in writing than discovered on the morning.
Start with the check-in time the airline specifies, add the road at the hour you will be on it, then add again the cushion you would wish you had if the road misbehaved. It is the third figure people quietly delete. From the far side of the basin, or from the upper Médoc, make it generous: the roads out there are single-carriageway for most of their length and there is no second route.
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An accessible vehicle is priced only after somebody has confirmed one can be supplied for your date and your equipment. Suitability settles first and the money follows it.
About us
Our part of it, and everybody else’s.
We sell one thing: a named vehicle for your party at a figure you have read before agreeing to it. Every published amount above belongs to the airport, to the tariff order or to a transport operator, and each is credited where it appears.
That distinction is what the whole build rests on. The two city figures are the airport’s and it calls them averages; the ceilings belong to the national order and the figures inside them to the Gironde prefecture; the ticket and the seat prices belong to the operators who run the tram and the coach; the queue at the Hall A kerb belongs to nobody. Ours is the number on your confirmation and nothing above it.
Nothing here claims the airport has endorsed us, because it endorses no private-hire operator in anything it publishes. Nothing here reproduces another transfer company’s example fares, because those are their figures and not ours. And nothing here turns the airport’s two reported averages into a price, because the airport itself declines to.
How the business is put together is described on the about page, and what every booking is made subject to is in the terms and conditions.
What leaving costs follows the address the car collects from, the flight it has to meet and the hour it must therefore pull away. A closed terminal at three in the morning belongs in that sum too.
Questions
Twenty-three questions, each answered in its first sentence.
Every answer begins with the answer. The reason follows it, and wherever a figure belongs to the airport, to the tariff order or to a transport operator, the answer says whose it is.
Bordeaux Airport reports about €35 during the day and about €45 at night, and labels both as information rather than a price, subject to traffic. There is no fixed airport fare at Bordeaux, so a rank taxi runs on the meter and those two figures describe an average of one. A pre-booked private transfer is quoted separately for your own journey.
Outside Hall A, at the outside entrance. The airport says taxis are there every day from the first flight to the last. There is no second rank at Hall B or at billi, so an arrival into either of those walks across to Hall A.
Yes, and it is the only way to land with the figure already agreed. Enter BOD at one end, write the other address out in full, add the date, the hour and the flight number, count the passengers and then the cases, and read the quotation before confirming anything.
Hall A takes most airlines and holds the taxi rank; Hall B is Air France and is where the tram stop and the airport coach are; billi is the low-cost terminal, used by easyJet among others, with arrivals and departures on one floor rather than two. Check your own flight, because hall assignments change.
No, and there may not be. French rules forbid any supplement or increase for a pick-up at a station, a port or an airport, and equally forbid any supplement for a wheelchair. The supplements that do exist are for each passenger from the fifth and for each bulky item of luggage.
Because France sets fixed airport taxi prices only at Paris, Nice, Cannes, Antibes, Toulouse and in Guadeloupe. Bordeaux is not on that list, so nothing published here is a flat fare. Anybody presenting one as official has turned an average into a promise.
Yes. Tram line F runs from a stop in front of the express car park beside Hall B into the city, calling at the Hôtel de Ville and the Pellegrin hospital on its way to Gare Saint-Jean.
The airport prints €1.90 for a single ticket and €15.70 for a book of ten. Tickets come from the press shop in the terminal, from the machines beside the stop in front of Hall B, or through the transport operator’s own application.
The airport puts it at about forty-five minutes, and about thirty-five minutes to the Hôtel de Ville in the centre. It runs every ten minutes on weekdays and Saturdays and every fifteen on Sundays.
Yes. The 30’DIRECT coach runs between gate 7 at Hall B and the city centre exit of the station in about thirty minutes under normal traffic, every day of the year. Fares start at €8 a person as the airport prints it, with under-fives free.
All three passenger buildings are closed to the public between midnight and four in the morning, and the airport reserves the right to change those hours. That matters for a very early departure, because you cannot wait inside beforehand.
Yes. Give the district as well as the town, because Arcachon has a hill quarter, a seafront and several outlying areas, and the exact address decides the drop-off. For the Dune du Pilat, name the hotel or campsite at Pyla-sur-Mer or La Teste-de-Buch rather than the dune, which has footpaths rather than a kerb.
Yes, and send the property rather than the appellation. The village centre is steep, narrow and partly closed to vehicles, and an estate outside it may be twenty minutes further on a road with no name. The château name, the hamlet and the commune together are what reach the gate.
Yes, and name the village. Lège-Cap-Ferret is a peninsula of separate settlements along one road — Claouey, Petit Piquey, Grand Piquey, Piraillan, Le Canon, L’Herbe, Bélisaire and the point itself — and the difference between them is a significant part of an hour.
Yes. Margaux, Saint-Julien, Pauillac, Saint-Estèphe, Moulis, Listrac, Lesparre and Soulac are all bookable. Give the property name and its full address: estates on the D2 frequently share an entrance with a neighbour and the road has little signage.
Yes, and it is one of the shorter runs from the airport. Pessac covers a town centre, the Alouette district, two railway halts, several university and research campuses and a vineyard inside the suburbs, so name the building; a number of the campus entrances are gated.
Yes. Bergerac, Sarlat and the villages around them are long-distance bookings, confirmed before they are quoted. Rural addresses out there often have a hamlet name instead of a street, so a line of arrival notes is worth more than a postcode.
Yes. Eight is as far as one car goes; a ninth traveller turns the booking into a group movement in a minicoach instead. Count luggage as carefully as people, since it is the cases that usually decide which class is sent.
Yes, at no extra cost. Request it as you book and state the age of each child: an infant carrier, a toddler seat and a booster cushion are three different things, and the correct one travels out with the vehicle rather than being found at the airport.
Your flight number is on the booking, so the vehicle is tracking the aeroplane and the pick-up moves along with it. The free allowance opens when the wheels touch down, not at the published time, and runs an hour — an hour and a half if the baggage hall is what is keeping you.
Yes, and putting the two legs on one booking before you leave home is worth the two minutes. Leaving is the half with no give in it, and a locked estate gate or an unmanned campsite reception at six in the morning is a far smaller problem settled in writing beforehand.
Not usually, for one person travelling light. The tram is the cheaper answer for a single traveller with a cabin bag going somewhere near a stop. A private car earns its place with luggage, with children, at an hour when nothing is running, or for an address the line does not go anywhere near.
Yes, with notice. These vehicles are arranged beforehand and never found on the morning, because what is needed depends entirely on the passenger. Say whether the chair collapses, whether a move into a normal seat is possible, and what else is coming, and the vehicle is confirmed before any booking is accepted.
Nothing printed above is a figure of ours. Two averages come from the airport, the ceilings from the national order, the ticket and the seat from the operators who run them. The one number we set appears on your confirmation.
Four answers settle it: the flight, the address at the far end written out in full, the size of the party, and how many cases will really come off the belt. What you get back is one vehicle at one agreed figure, the aeroplane watched from the number you gave, and a meeting point written into the confirmation — instead of a queue at the Hall A kerb, a tram timetable and a village on the peninsula you have never seen.